This Year 2 reading comprehension unit is based on New Baby, a warm, funny and relatable poem by award-winning author and poet Joshua Seigal.
The text captures the excitement, frustration and love that come with welcoming a newborn sibling. It's ideal for developing empathy as well as comprehension.
The resource includes plain and illustrated PDF versions of the poem, along with PowerPoints for classroom display. Teachers can choose between a version with highlighted text for focused reading or a clean version for shared or independent reading.
An annotated version of the poem is also provided, offering guidance on close reading and highlighting opportunities for drama, discussion or visualisation.
Resourced teaching sessions
The unit is based around two resourced teaching sessions, each with an explicit vocabulary focus. Key words explored include gurgle, grumble, mumble, divine and wailing.
Pupils will learn about onomatopoeia, synonyms, antonyms and meaning in context through engaging slides, word cards and simple sentence tasks.
The pack also includes ‘Big Questions’ to prompt oral discussion, along with worksheets designed to build pupils’ skills in retrieval, prediction, sequencing and inference.
Writing-in-role activities encourage children to connect personally with the poem. Meanwhile, structured prompts support them in expressing opinions and exploring viewpoints.
This flexible unit can be taught as a standalone poetry resource or as part of a thematic sequence. It forms part of the Real Comprehension whole-school programme, which offers high-quality poetry, fiction and non-fiction units for Years 1–6.
Included in this Year 2 resource pack:
- Full teaching notes with suggested reading strategies and discussion prompts
- New Baby poem by Joshua Seigal (PDF: plain and illustrated)
- PowerPoint versions with and without highlighted text
- Annotated teacher version of the text
- Teaching sequences with vocabulary PowerPoints
- Big Questions PowerPoints and worksheets
- Vocabulary focus word cards
- Worksheets